Editorial Comment
THREE months ago, Essex Police published a press release announcing that reported crime was down by seven per cent.
“Home Office figures released on Thursday, July 15, comparing the 2009/10 to the 2008/9 financial year, show improvements across most categories of crime, in particular robbery and theft of motor vehicles, both down 16% this year in Essex. Crimes of violence against the person have dropped an encouraging 3%, burglaries of peoples’ homes by 1%.”
Very laudable. It did rather beg a question though: How many of those crimes were actually solved?
Many police forces have detailed crime statistics. Not just for murder, rape, burglary, drink-driving but also offences such as: perjury, littering, under-agers attempting to buy alcohol, no MOT. An extremely comprehensive list that are published in a document that can be picked up at police stations, doctors surgeries, council offices and indeed on the net.
So it seemed to be a natural question to ask:
“Could you supply the detection rates for the following crimes in Thurrock over the 2006-7, 07-08 and 08-09 periods: Violence Against Person, sexual offences, robbery,fraud,drugs,criminal damage and burglary”
We firstly asked the Thurrock Community Safety Partnership.
We were told that we would need to submit a freedom of information (foi) request.
We have to say were were surprised.
We can only imagine that when the safety partnership are on their regular community engagement days, conversations go like this:
Partnership: “Hello we are the Thurrock Community Safety Partnership
Citizen: Are you here to reassure the community about crime?
Partnership: Yes
Citizen: “Ok. How many burglaries were reported on my street last year?
Partnership: 27
Citizen: And how many were solved
Partnership: Ah. You need to submit a foi request to Essex Police for that
Citizen: So let me get this right. We have Thurrock police, Thurrock Council, Fire Brigade, NHS, community forums and a whole host of voluntary groups here on my street and you can’t tell me f any crimes have actually been solved
Partnership: No……..
So, we submitted an FOI to Essex Police and asked:
“Could you supply the detection rates for the following crimes in Thurrock over the 2006-7, 07-08 and 08-09 periods: Violence Against Person, sexual offences, robbery,fraud,drugs,criminal damage and burglary”
Twenty days passed and we received a reply that they are dealing with this but it may take a little longer.
We waited and waited. Two months later, we wrote to Essex Police again and asked where is the information?
Essex Police were very apologetic but due to work demands they could not give us a date when the information could become available.
So, there we have it. Nobody can tell you whether any crimes in Thurrock were solved or not.
Needless to say, we will be writing to the Information Commissioner about this.
We also want to stress that we are not getting at the people who work at the coalface, the cops out on the night shifts and the various agencies such as the safety partnership. They may well be caught in a political tug of war between politicians in Whitehall and police bosses in Chelmsford.
It leaves you very curious. Just go to the YourThurrock crime page and ask:
Did Thurrock police solve?
1. The theft of the horsebox in Aveley?
2. The robbery in Lodge Lane?
3. The delivery driver in South Ockendon
4. The mugging in Stanford?
5. Bogus workmen in Ock
6. Arson at Blackshots
7. Arson at several playgrounds
8. Teenage girl robbed in Grays
9. Three cars smashed in South Ock
10. Man robbed in woods in Grays
11. Robbery in Corringham
…and that is just the last six weeks! These are just the ones that either we have picked up on or have been appeals for witnesses from the police.
Having said all that, if you think it is bad now, what will happen when £43 million pounds worth of cuts really bite? From all reports, Thurrock is the poor cousin in Essex (financially) despite the incredible and varied amount of policing demands that face the borough.
YourThurrock has tremendous sympathy for the police in Thurrock. If you ever see the work the Fraud Squad have in front of them with a mountain of paper trail cases. If you see how swiftly they reacted to the incident last week of a firearm in Dell Road; the operation to get a helicopter at T-Fest in July; the meticulous work at a murder scene; the work at the worrying number of fatal RTC’s on the roads in the last four weeks or the numbers out in force at Coryton yesterday then you can only have praise.
The worrying allegation is that many people simply don’t bother reporting crime. Last week, Deputy Leader of Thurrock Council Val Morris-Cook offered a personal reward for any information regarding arson attacks in playgrounds. A few weeks prior to this, YourThurrock actually filmed in high definition, five youths walking away from an arson attack. Thurrock police have been in contact but not for a statement from us or the informant or the 27 other witnesses standing by. We have asked them how the investigation is progressing. We have not received a reply.
We will let you know if we make any progress.
Then we will find out the conviction rates…………….move along now…..
It does make you think that they hav something to hide, it should not take months to glean the type of information that you have requested.
Maybe they all hope that people will forget about the crimes, that way they don’t have to do anything…
As a police officer living (but not working) in Thurrock, I feel that this article has effectively hit the nail right on the head.
I thank michael for raising an important issue, whilst acknowledging that the vast majority of officers are working hard to try and provide a service to the public.
The Freedom of Information Act is open to abuse. I had read many articles which have been based upon the result of FOIA requests which beg the question if it was really in the public interest to use police resources to trawl data to provide the answer.
This request by Your Thurrock is perhaps the most obvious information that the public deserve to know the answer to. How are the police performing in solving crime in my area?
All I can stress is that even in the current climate of huge budget cuts, and the threat of an outrageous bid to remove the pension provisions which we signed up for (and pay 11% of salary towards), the vast majority of officers are trying to provide the best service we can.
We do not wish to be forced to chase the warped targets and adgenda that the Home Office set for us. We want to lock up the bad guys and keep you safe, but that is no longer within the control of your front line police.
I do hope that Essex police senior management get their act together and provide a response, because I can see from Lambo’s comments that the front line police officers are losing the faith of the community despite our best endevours.
Good article Michael.
Good response Stifford, I can understand some of your frustrations as I have relatives in the job; however, having been the victim of crime and also having a close family memeber on the end of an assault where Essex Police seemed to want to brush it under the carpet as they did not have the manpower to even send out an officer to get a statement which resulted in me attending the police station and not moving until they dealt with the incident, so you can see how my faith in the local police has wained.
I appreciate that the front line police have a very difficult job with all the government targets and added paperwork, on to of this you have to watch criminals walk scott free from our courts due to the weakness of the judges and our justice system and I applaud you all for sticking with the job but this article just shows the inept administration that is in place at the Essex Police HQ, surely all these figures are maintained on a central conputer and can simply be processed within a very short time.
Lambo,
Three points in response:
1) Believe me, these stats are easily obtainable. There is massive pressure from each borough senior management team to increase detection rates. Figures are produced daily for briefings and are generally used as a stick to beat officers with by management. Sometimes it seems like detection rates are the only thing that matter.
2) The use of detection rates as a performance indicator actually encourages poor policing. The government love performance indicators because they are so measurable. But the effect of this is that it only encourages the police to criminalise as many people as possible, especially for low level crime. We need to detect as many offences as possible to get our figures up. If an 11 year old school kid is caught stealing sweets, do we say that it is not in the public interest to criminalise him (no detection) and inform his parents, or do we give him a police caution (a detection) which he would need to disclose in the future under certain circumstances?
It also encourages us concentrate resources on easy to detect crime rather than complex enquiries, because they are less likely to achieve a detection.
Performance led policing is also dangerous in that you score no points for finding a lost child, assisting the ambulance service to break down a door behind which an elderly person has collapsed, sorting out traffic collisions etc etc. These activities don’t result in arrests or detections, but are vital areas of service that can’t be measured. Continue to performance measure the police, and expect less time to be devoted to missing person enquiries etc.
3) Finally you have used the word ‘Manpower’. This is gender specific and therefore exclusionary. Police can never have too many hours of diversity training……..
Stifford, I had a feeling that the stats ould be simple to collate but it seems that Essex Police are dragging their heels on Michaels attempt at gleaning the information, is this due to them having something to hide???
I can totally agree with your second point, the performance indicators are a complete joke and waste the frontline officers time, where once a police reprimand would have surficed for a small misdemeanor it is now a detection and arrest just for the stats.
The police (front line) do a great job and should be left alone to get on with what they do best without the governments interference, leave the policing to the police and the politics to the politicians, unfortunately this is not the case and the publics perception of the police is becoming that of an over officious sevice who crack down on the easy targets and leave the big fish to swim away.
Yep I should have said non gender, religious, colour, creed specific power, I do need to watch out for the PC brigade 🙂